The proper lesson is to be more prepared and/or creative, not to not go rallying. Police didn’t find a reason to disperse Patriots’ noise barrage last June 25 because they’d look ridiculous dispersing one.

There are more reasons for taking to the streets today than in either 1986 and 2001, and a campaign is waged at the long term so its success is not to be measured by what happens at one rally. Edsa 2 was the culmination of a series that began in 1999. Edsa 1 began decades before 1986.

A group lets itself be cowed by cowardly police acts, that is what doesn’t cut. Even Marcos and Estrada found it fit to back down from some of their hard-line positions when they saw that the people refused to be terrorized by dispersals.

Not going rallying when there’s every reason to do so is just like not fighting back when a foreign army invades your country. It’s as if usurpers have the right to usurp.

rallying is fine.
its going beyond boundaries that is not. why would anyone want to breach the walls of the US Embassy (example yung mga nagra-rally dun na nababatuta)? what the hell are they going to do once they are inside? shout some more expletives? it looks sensational on TV pero kasalanan din ng mga ralyista minsan eh. once they breach demarcation lines, they should assume the consequences of their actions. period.

The way I see it, the whole point of Ederic’s article is that rallies should not be dispersed when everything is in order. In the first place there is no reason for any dispersal unless the rally erupts into a riot, because the Constitution provides for the right of peaceful assembly as the people’s way of seeking government redress of grievances. But most dispersed rallies under this administration were utterly peaceful.

Try attending one of those rallies near the US embassy and you’ll see that the demonstrators are usually truncheoned even when they’re still a hundred meters away from the embassy itself. TV footages aren’t always able to capture everything.

Anyway, who the hell are the US embassy personnel (and the PNP, for thast matter) to impose restrictions on where Filipinos should rally? The land on which the US embassy stands is still Philippine land; the US is merely privileged with the use of that space, and it is the right of Filipinos to rally as close to the US embassy as possible when there are American atrocities of any kind against Filipinos.